‘Community’ Showrunner Dan Harmon Apologizes to Everyone … Almost

Sony Pictures TV left out of mea culpa

Sometimes the guys on your team do things that make you cringe, but at the end of the game, they’re still your guys.

That’s likely to be the reaction for fans of Team Dan Harmon, after the once-and–future “Community” showrunner trashed with extreme prejudice the fourth season of the NBC sitcom — the one that ran without his participation.

“I went to bed feeling great, woke up and started work on season five of ‘Community’ with our exciting season five staff,” Harmon wrote. “I took them to lunch, checked my tweets, discovered my name in several headlines next to several bad words, and, as usual, it was then that I started to consider how my words might affect other people if viewed as headlines. After five seconds of thinking, I realized, as usual, that other people might be hurt, and that I really need to do this whole ‘saying things and thinking about other people’ cycle in a different order at some point.

Harmon also apologized to the fans who invested time in watching season four, although that’s the group most likely to have his back and, if anything, think his rant was justified. While opinions varied to whether season four of “Community” was a success, failure or somewhere in between, you’d be hard-pressed to find any original “Community” fans who aren’t glad to see Harmon back at the reins.

It should be noted that Harmon’s apologies did not extend to Sony Pictures TV, whose “assembly line” approach to writers he attacked, barely two weeks after the studio hired him back. What’s the sound of one hand clapping? That’s the section at the “Community” ballpark where Sony bought tickets.

Season 4 of Community was a watered down unfunny remake of the previous seasons that lacked all the qualities that made the show with a bad time-slot do so well, I wouldn’t at all have used the words Harmon used but I do agree with him 100%.